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Saturday, June 8, 2002

A really good beta is like a really good therapist; both have the gift, not of giving you the right answers, but of asking the right questions, the ones that force you to come up with the right answers. They take in the story that you're telling them, reflect on it, and then say, "OK, this part here, this doesn't hang together with what you were telling me earlier, what's the discrepancy about? This part feels true, this convinces me; but this other part over here feels like you're skimming the surface, you're just giving me the pat answer--is there more going on there than I'm seeing? Now this bit here, I can tell something's going on, but I'm not sure what it is, can you help me understand what it all really means? This character keeps showing up, but he feels flat; why is he important, what does he mean to your story?"

The therapist is the beta reader for our life stories, always pushing us to go deeper, strip away the equivocation and cliches and easy lies, connect the dots, see the big picture, dig down to the bedrock truths, make coherent meaning out of the random collection of scenes and emotions and actions and personae we carry around in our heads. Not by telling us what to do, but by asking us to think through and say more about what it all means. Life happens; we make meaning out of what happens by turning it into a story, our life story; and when our life story stops making sense, no longer works, we bring in a good beta.

I've been lucky enough to have a couple of good therapists in my time, and I'm even luckier to have several really good betas (because writing is even harder than living). You folks know who you are ‹g›, and I send huge love and gratitude out to all of you.

Posted @ 12:08 PM CST [Link]4 comments

Friday, June 7, 2002

Heh. After the work-related bitching of the last entry, I have to say this:

There's a very particular skill set involved in being able to run a long meeting--setting and keeping an agenda; giving people enough leeway to talk out issues and air gripes without letting things careen off track; keeping the monologuists on a leash and getting the quieter folks to speak up; bringing the focus back to substantive topics and reaching decisions that everyone can live with. And there's an ancillary skill set involved in being able to conduct lengthy training sessions--conveying complex information in a way that's easily grasped and related to what people already know; improvising and rearranging material on the fly; giving plenty of concrete examples; being crisp, clear, articulate, easily heard, and funny from time to time.

Now, while there are many things I'm no good at, I am pretty good at these two things. My old boss, now gone, was also good at them; on the other hand, my new boss, and my co-workers, are smart, hard-working, dedicated, likeable people with a wide array of skills and gifts, but none of them are particularly good at these two things.

My new boss has also made it clear that he wants to decentralize leadership, and to encourage all of us to identify our areas of strength and run with them. And my colleagues have let me know that even though I pulled this training session out of my ass at the eleventh hour, it's gone much better than such affairs have in the past.

Hence, I think I might have a talk with my boss at some point about taking on the role of Straw Boss of Training and Staff Meetings. I'm pretty sure he'd be delighted and would give me the go-ahead.

How cool is it to work in a place where you're encouraged to go with your strengths, and do the things where you really shine? I'm immensely lucky. It would be cool to win the lottery and set up the slash compound ‹g›, but failing that, I could hardly be in a better place.

Posted @ 07:59 AM CST [Link]3 comments

Thursday, June 6, 2002

Beth's most excellent entry of June 3rd really says it all. Beth is cool.

My own #11 to Beth's list, by the way, would be something like "Writing! Gaaahhh!! Why do I even try???" My writing output lately reminds me of that old joke about "The food here is terrible!" "Yeah, and the portions are so small!" But the less said about it, the better. Actually, I've been very much in non-word-space lately, spending a lot of time playing with photography, sewing projects, visual/tactile stuff. My life's been very badly out of balance lately, and I feel like I need to knot some sheets together and climb down out of my head. At the same time, I have a nervous fear that if I don't keep flogging this spavined broken-winded cow-hocked nag of a story forward, it'll just buckle underneath me and die.

Work (why? why? why?) has been rather overwhelming, since I somehow missed the clue that I was supposed to be in charge of organizing a week-long staff training, and so have been doing the frantic catch-up scramble. Which in turn took up all the time I'd mentally allotted for all the other stuff that I really should have done back in mid-May, and which will now have to be done once I'm (technically) off appointment in mid-July. Because next week we descend into The Hell That Is New Student Orientation, and the stress/busyness levels will rachet up another notch. So updates may be a bit sporadic here; I'll try to check back in when I have something to say, and when I get my mood bitch-slapped back into a state where I can say it more entertainingly.

Posted @ 08:13 AM CST [Link]7 comments